In September, our Catalonian partners PROA, in collaboration with ALICE’s partner from Slovakia, presented a first version of a new methodology designed to map out the animation industry. This work responds to the serious need for European animation players to build a solid industry network, identify the available skills and capacities, and use a common frame of reference to collaborate and be competitive. Building upon the ALICE’s working groups’ outputs after this “transversal stage”, PROA presented a second, more detailed version of the methodology in December. The result is impressive.
In its second version, the methodology provides a thorough classification of all the actors in the industry’s value chain, identified by occupations, types of production companies, sources of financing, distribution profiles and audiences’ groups. Going further, it incorporates the ‘support functions’ including the education and legal systems, thereby managing to account for a whole ecosystem.
Mondo Yan, co-produced by Imira Entertainment, Televisió de Catalunya - CCMA, Telegael & Toonz Media Group
The methodological document also informs its users about how to approach the inventory process, providing guidelines and resources to collect data for each category of actors. In a very practical way, reflecting ALICE’s on-the-ground approach, it also gives a complete list of the objectives and possible outputs, including identifying the most in-demand professionals and their skills, assessing and improving the financial tools available to the industry and identifying new trends in audiovisual consumption, to name a few.
The objective is to provide stakeholders with a complete 360-degree picture of the state of maturity of the sector in one territory, but also to be able to compare it with another territory, exchanging and implementing successful initiatives for the sustainable growth of the animation ecosystem.
This fundamental work for the entire animation industry is the results of 18 months of intense collaboration with people who make, finance, distribute and regulate animated films across Europe. It already provides a reference document that will feed into the concrete proposals pertaining to finance, distribution and education matters that ALICE’s partners are working on.
At the end of next semester, PROA will present the final version to ALICE partners, with the aim of testing the proposal, in the phase II of the project, in ALICE’s six territories, including Catalonia (Spain), the Republic of Slovakia, Wallonia (Belgium), the Hauts-de-France region, the Puglia region (Italy), and the Rzeszow region (Poland). Whatever refining it might need, the mapping of the animation industry is a huge step towards the organization of its actors, the harmonization of its rules and the acknowledgement by decision makers of the strategic importance of the sector for the European economy.
Cover picture: Dalia y el libro rojo, co-produced by Doce Entertainment (Mr Miyagi Films group), Golem Studio & Vista Sur Films
